


sorry about the blood in your mouth, i wish it was mine

by forcynics



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Multi, post-1x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t even look at you, Clary,” Simon spits, low and accusatory. “I wanted to see you so badly, and now you’re right there, and I can’t even <i>look</i> at you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	sorry about the blood in your mouth, i wish it was mine

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt "the monster you've made of me" at [the shadowhunters ficathon](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83265.html)

 

 

 

_Simon wants to see you._

The text comes in from Simon’s number, but obviously not from Simon himself. Clary takes a few steps back from where the others are clustered around one of the screens in the Institute lobby.

_Camille fled. Vampires under control. No one from Dumont will hurt you under this roof._

Raphael. One last text comes in a few seconds later:

_We want no trouble with Shadowhunters._

Clary’s grips her phone with white knuckles and doesn’t know what to write back. She’s staring through the screen, numb, remembering Simon’s pale hand reaching up through the grave dirt, and his teeth – _fangs_ – tearing into plastic blood bags and blood splashing all over him and he didn’t look anything like her best friend and she misses him so much she hasn’t stopped feeling sick since they left the cemetery yesterday.

She hasn’t decided if she still thinks she made the right choice.

There’s a warm hand on her shoulder, and Jace is in front of her, peeled away from everyone else with a frown on his face.

“Are you okay?”

She shoves her phone at him, lets him read the texts himself. His frown only gets deeper.

“The Clave would _not_ want you going back to Hotel Dumont,” he says quickly, and it makes something inside Clary burst, a flare of anger rising up, hot and painful but better than numb.

“I don’t _care_ what the Clave—” she hisses, snatching her phone back from him.

“Hey.” Jace’s hand is still on her shoulder, and he squeezes gently. “I didn’t say that means we shouldn’t go. We’ll just have to be quiet about it.”

He says _we_ like it’s assumed he’s coming with her, and he rubs a hand over his chin like he’s already thinking of the best way to get out of here without anyone noticing, and the anger sputters out inside her, replaced with relief and warm gratitude in the pit of her stomach.

“Thanks,” she says quietly, already texting Raphael back.

_Be there soon._

 

 

 

Raphael leads them up an old, ornate elevator to one of the floors near the top of the hotel, down a sleek marble hallway, and pauses in front of the last door. 

“Just let us see him,” Clary means to snap at him, bursting with nerves and guilt and sorrow, but it comes out more like a plea. 

“I should really accompany you—” Raphael starts to say, but she shakes her head.

“No,” she insists. Vampires have a predator’s hearing, don’t they? Raphael can probably hear the shake in her voice on that one syllable. “I have to see him alone.”

Raphael doesn’t look pleased with this answer, mouth twitching like he’s mulling over the right combination of words for diplomacy.

“I’ve got it,” Jace cuts in. He’s standing behind her, a quiet, solid presence, and she hadn’t really meant for him to come in either, but then she remembers the wild look in Simon’s eyes when he stared at them at the grave site, shirt splashed with a stranger’s blood, fangs dripping in his mouth, looking at them like he had no idea who they were.

Or at least no idea how they’d let him become _this_.

Raphael finally nods, opens the door, and disappears.

 

 

 

The room is luxuriously decorated – there’s no bed, only a long couch along one wall. Simon’s sitting on it, jumps to his feet when they walk in, the movement faster than would be possible for anyone human, and Clary almost trips.

“Clary,” he says after a moment, just her name, and she doesn’t know what she’d been expecting, but the lack of emotion in his voice sends a jolt down her spine. 

He wanted to see her, so here she is. 

“Simon,” she breathes out slowly, tries not to let the ache sound in her voice. “How-how are you?” 

Simon doesn’t respond, doesn’t react at all, like he didn’t even hear the question. He’s staring at the pair of them, eyes heavy-lidded, mouth open, and his entire body twitches. He seems to lean forward for a second before throwing himself back down, grabs a blood bag from a pile at the end of the couch and rips into it.

He doesn’t make a mess this time, just gulps it down greedily, eyes closed in rapture. He looks nothing like Simon, not like this.

He finishes the blood bag, and then another, and then on the third and final bag, he’s shaking too violently when he tries to rip it open with his teeth, and the bag tears all the way down, blood splashing all over the floor and the couch and his shirt.

Simon doesn’t move. His eyes are still closed.

“I just thought,” he says finally, quietly. “I just thought, if I kept these right here, I could just see you, and I wouldn’t want it so badly.”

Her blood. Jace’s blood. 

Simon’s fists are clenched into the blood-soaked couch, his shoulders hunched over.

“I can’t even look at you, Clary,” he spits, low and accusatory. “I wanted to see you so badly, and now you’re right there, and I can’t even _look_ at you.” 

Clary makes herself take a step forward, and then another. 

“I just wanted to save you, Simon.” She forces the words out, feels like she’s choking on them. “I couldn’t lose you too. I could never—” Her voice crumples, and she crumples too, going to her knees in front of him. 

Simon’s still frozen, immobile, on the couch, but up this close she can see the shine of the blood on his shirt, can study the eerie stillness of his throat and his chest, not moving, not breathing.

“Clary, you need to move away from me,” he grits out through his teeth.

She’s already shaking her head, throat closed tight, knees planted solid on the floor.

“Clary—” That’s Jace now, behind her, sounding more nervous than she’s ever heard him before.

She doesn’t move.

“You need to _move_ ,” Simon repeats, more insistent now, and this time he lifts his head, eyes wide and mouth gaping with fangs and wet with blood and Clary can’t help the soft cry that slips out of her, but she doesn’t move, she can’t, she can’t, she can’t—

“ _Move, Clary_ ,” Simon snarls, angry now.

“Go ahead!” It comes out hysterically, breaks into a sob. “Drink my blood, Simon, take whatever you need, I _did_ this to you, I—” Her voice is choked with horror but it’s not Simon she’s horrified with, it’s _herself._

She saved Simon’s life, but what kind of life did she leave him with?

“No—” Simon starts to say, or maybe it’s Jace, or maybe it’s both of them at once, it doesn’t matter, because then something in Simon breaks, his body arcs in one quick _snap_ , and he lunges for her.

 

 

 

A weight slams into her, but it’s from another direction entirely, shoving her away, and she smashes her elbow into the marble floor trying to catch her fall.

She blinks, and she lifts her head, and her mouth goes dry.

Simon’s got a tight grip on Jace’s shoulders, pinning him to the floor, and his face is buried in Jace's neck, his _fangs_ are buried in Jace’s neck, and there’s fresh blood spilling out from the new wound.

Clary’s vision swims for a long, hanging moment, and when she comes back to, she’s shrieking Simon’s name.

But Simon isn’t ripping into Jace all over, tearing him to shreds like one of those blood bags. He gulps furiously from the one bite at Jace’s neck, but his body starts to go relaxed, grip loosening.

Jace’s eyes are closed, and he’s not resisting, not shoving Simon away or reaching for the stele at his waist. He’s saying one word, over and over and over quietly, and Clary realizes he’s saying Simon’s name too, like a reminder, in case the vampire at his neck might forget what he used to be.

Simon shudders, a long, rippling motion that seems to twist his body as it runs down him, and then he lifts his head from Jace’s neck with a gasp.

His chin is dripping red, and his eyes are dark and somewhere else entirely, and Jace sits up slowly.

Jace’s eyes are dazed too, and when he turns to her and asks, “Clary, are you okay?” his voice comes out a little slurred, a little drunkenly.

“I–I’m fine, are you—” she starts to ask, but he nods slowly, somehow calm even seconds after vampire fangs were buried in his neck.

Jace raises a hand to his neck, touches it gingerly and grimaces, but then he nods his head toward Simon, who’s slumped to his knees on the floor, head hanging, and Clary’s attention goes back to the other boy immediately.

She crawls closer to Simon, tries not to think of the way he snapped his teeth for her or the gleam of blood in his mouth. 

She has to steel herself before she can reach out to touch his shoulder lightly. 

“Simon?”

He looks up, and his eyes are calmer now, and then he looks at Jace and somehow goes even paler than he already was.

“Oh my—” he starts to say, chokes on _God_ , and winces, eyes screwing shut.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jace grunts, lifting himself to his feet slowly. He flashes them both a wide and wicked smile. “I know I’m pretty irresistible.”

Clary rolls her eyes at him, and then there’s an odd sound, and it takes her a moment to realize it’s Simon and he just laughed. 

“Compared to a blood bag,” he starts to say, voice dry and rasping, “—either of you would be like—like champagne to ginger ale.”

Clary almost smiles, feels the smallest bit of warmth in her chest. She’s still holding his shoulder, and she squeezes it tight.

 

 

 

“Simon, I’m so sorry,” she says eventually, she doesn’t know how much later, doesn’t know how long the moment stretched between the three of them has really been. 

Simon shakes his head, wipes the blood off his chin.

“You wanted to save me.” He finally looks her in the eye. “I would have done the same for you.”

It’s not quite forgiveness, but it still feels like something breaking inside her chest, and all she wants is to throw her arms around his neck and fall into him and let him hold her close like he always used to, but she knows that she can’t, not quite, not yet.

“We’ll find a way to make this work,” she promises, wets her lips. “We’ll help you, Simon, and we’ll come back here again, and—”

“No.” 

He says it so firmly it startles her, and then he grabs her wrist from his shoulder, gripping it tightly in his hand, and his eyes have a bit of that panicked look from before, and she hears Jace stepping closer.

“You can’t keep running out of the Institute, Clary, not when Valentine’s looking for you. I shouldn’t have—” He swallows, looks pained. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come, to walk into a den of vampires. It’s not safe—” he breaks off, forces something like a chuckle out, so bitter it stings her. “Believe me, it’s not safe.”

“Simon—”

“Promise me, Clary,” he insists. “Promise me you won’t come back here, not until Raphael can teach me more, not until it’s—not until _I’m_ safe.”

“You’d never hurt me,” she says automatically, even if her voice is feeble and she remembers the anger in his voice before he lunged for her.

“Promise me, anyway. Promise me you’ll be safe. Don’t you dare get yourself killed and leave me like this.” His voice is shaking by the end of the sentence.

“I promise,” she finally says, and the words feel horrible in her mouth.

Simon looks up past her. “I’m counting on you too.”

Clary looks over her shoulder, sees Jace nod once. He seems to be struggling with himself for a moment, and then his shoulders slump a little. 

“He’s right, Clary. We shouldn’t stay here any longer.”

Simon lets go of her wrist, and she gets to her feet, still a little shaky. She can’t quite tear her eyes away from all the blood on Simon’s shirt, even when her feet have carried her all the way to the entrance. Jace hovers behind her, one hand on the small of her back, a minor comfort.

“Stay safe,” Simon reminds her. He’s looking down at the floor, and she wonders if he’s already craving more blood, if it’s already getting hard to be in the same room as them again.

“Pinky swear,” she tells him, silly words from when they were kids making promises on the playground that never meant anything like this. 

Simon’s head snaps up, and his mouth quirks, just the briefest tug of a smile.

Even with the blood and the fangs, it’s the most he’s looked like her best friend since she walked in the door, since he crawled out of a grave.

He nods once, solemn, and repeats after her.

“Pinky swear.”

 

 

 


End file.
